Should You Be Freelancing on Tumblr? (What You Need to Know)

If you’re thinking of a site that serves as an online diary for thousands of teens, you’re only partially right. Many of Tumblr’s users are teenagers. However, I was surprised to learn that the average age for a Tumblr user is 34.6 years old (according to Garrett Button’s article, Age, Gender and Social Media Strategy: Audience Analytics for B2B, published on the ArgyleSocial blog). That’s about 15 years older than I expected–certainly at 34 years old most users are past the teen diary phase.

While Tumblr is popular with teens, like other social media platforms before it, it is moving into the mainstream. In fact, according to this recent post from Julie Bort on Business Insider, Tumblr Is Being Used In A Supreme Court Case For The First Time. You read that correctly. The U.S. Supreme court will be referring to a Tumblr blog in a case.

So, as a freelancer, what should you know about Tumblr?

In this post, I’ll explain what Tumblr is and share five Tumblr blogs that might be helpful to freelancers.

What Is Tumblr?

Tumblr is a popular social media/blogging site that allows its users to create and share blog posts. Many Tumblr blogs rely heavily on quotes and images (I thought of a cross between Twitter and Pinterest when I first saw a Tumblr blog). Some Tumblr blogs incorporate animation and video. Many Tumblr blogs simply serve to aggregate popular posts on a topic. However, there are also blogs that look a lot like this one–you might not even realize you’re reading a Tumblr blog.

According to Tumblr’s own statistics, there are over 130 million Tumblr blogs. The site was started in 2007 by David Karp. Currently, Yahoo!, Inc. owns Tumblr.

Along with the aforementioned teen blogs, there are some big brand name blogs on Tumblr. That’s right. Corporations are coming to Tumblr. You should also be warned that there are quite a few Tumblr blogs with Adult content.

Tumblr content is easily shared between users through the reblog feature. Tumblr is also quick and easy to set up. Users can choose from a variety of available themes.

Marketing Your Freelance Business on Tumblr

So, as a freelancer, should you create a Tumblr blog for your freelancing business?

The answer is…it depends. If you are selling services to a younger demographic, the answer is probably “yes.” And while corporate America is starting to notice Tumblr, their presence there is mainly to sell products to millenials. So, for some freelancers, the answer might be “maybe.”

Freelance writer Lauren R. Tharp maintains both a Tumblr blog and a freelance blog on her own domain. She feels having both blogs has definitely helped her freelancing business. Lauren explains:

“According to my Google Analytics for littlezotz.com (my biz website), Tumblr is my 3rd highest traffic source. I even got one client who found me through my Tumblr.“

Here are five things you need to know if you plan to use Tumblr:

Setting up a Tumblr blog is easy and free of charge. There are plenty of free Tumblr themes that you can access through Tumblr’s Theme Garden.

Tumblr blogs can drive additional traffic to a more traditional blog hosted on your own domain.

Tumblr blogs don’t support comments without Disqus. This can make it hard to develop a community around your Tumblr blog.

As with any social platform, follow others and reblog (share) high quality content.

Tags are extremely important on Tumblr–it’s how many readers will find your content.

5 Tumblr Blogs Freelancers Can Check Out

There are some interesting blogs on Tumblr that freelancers may be interested in. Here are five of them (in no particular order):

Get Social RVA. While this blog isn’t geared directly to freelancers, this social media consulting company aggregates articles on social media topics (with commentary) that will be of interest to most freelancers. (Note:The blog seems to have been taken off Tumblr since this story was written.)

Who pays writers?. I first discovered this helpful Tumblr blog through Susan Johnston of The Urban Muse. Basically, the blog is a community effort where various writers share which publications pay and how much.

Who Pays Photographers?. This blog is very much like the one above–except it is for freelance photographers. Discover which publications pay photographers and how much they pay.

Artist Advice. If you’re an illustrator, cartoonist, or other type of artist, you’ll want to use this nicely done blog as a learning resource. The blog is full of questions, answers, and tutorials for artists.

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